1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to public transit system access and more specifically to enabling a full set of mass-transit fare-products without the need to store information on the identification tokens.
2. Background of the Invention
Fare collection in mass transit has traditionally relied on mass transit agencies issuing scrip. A “scrip ticket” is used to describe paper money being used for, e.g., mass transit rides in lieu of taking money at those rides. Originally in tangible form like coinage, the same system was later translated to the electronic domain as a “virtual scrip.” The virtual scrip was first stored in magnetic memory, later in electrical memory, sometimes connected to a microprocessor, such as in the case of so called smart cards.
The advent of virtual scrip brought with it the use of the storage medium to store not just scrip or a currency balance, but to store entitlement on the storage medium (in which case it may be called “fare media”). Such an entitlement might be the right to ride free of charge, or free of additional charge, for a specified time (e.g., a monthly pass), or the right to a reduced fare (e.g. a senior citizen pass).
However, such electronic fare media comes at a significant financial cost for transit agencies; not only is production and issuance of virtual scrip and other fare media very expensive, fraud risk is an additional burden in this model.
Independently of the above development, the recent years have brought the ubiquity contactless credit cards and contactless debit cards, as well as first attempts of implementing wireless payment or identification protocols using mobile phones.
A need thus exists to enable mass transit agencies to give up issuing fare media and make use of existing semi-public infrastructures of identification tokens, such as the credit and debit card networks, where issuers take on the cost of production, issuance and where the networks take on much of the fraud risk.